At Harvard, David Keene pans 'feel-good' gun ban

National Rifle Association President David Keene on Wednesday told an unfriendly audience at Harvard University the assault weapons ban proposed by a leading congressional gun control advocate was a “feel-good” measure that would do nothing to stop violence.

“We’re talking about banning it, really not to prevent crime, but to feel good,” Keene said, referring to the AR-15, one of the most common rifles in the United States. “The bans of this firearm, of this weapon, are bans based on cosmetics.”

But he gave little ground, accusing Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the sponsor of an assault weapons ban in the Senate, of wanting to ban guns simply because of their appearance.

“Dianne Feinstein would ban 157 different firearms that she thinks look like military weapons, solely based on cosmetics,” he said. “They can’t ban them on function, because they function the same way as my shotgun when I go duck hunting. So what they’ve done — literally — and her staff did this, they went through and looked at pictures, and said ‘This one should be banned, that one shouldn’t.’ So the same gun, with a pistol grip, it would be illegal. Without a pistol grip, it won’t be. The question is: What does that do?”

Keene, a former Institute of Politics fellow, was interviewed by CNN’s John King for the first 30 minutes, before taking questions from students. King pressed Keene on rhetoric used by Sen. Rand Paul, who wrote a letter claiming Feinstein’s bill was “the end of the Second Amendment.”

“It’s a crippling of it,” Keene said. “If you can ban that gun based on appearance, why can’t you ban other guns?”

A spokesman for Feinstein dismissed Keene’s depiction of the bill’s gestation, noting the bill specifically excludes more than 2,000 weapons intended for hunting. Feinstein’s legislation would ban semiautomatic rifle with detachable clips and one military feature, including pistol grips, telescoping stock or a threaded barrel.

“Senator Feinstein and her staff consulted with law enforcement agencies and policy experts for months to create a comprehensive list of weapons designed for hunting or sporting purposes that would not be covered by the ban,” said Brian Weiss, Feinstein’s spokesman, adding: “The list of firearms banned by name was compiled in a similar manner, with the addition of carefully reviewing named assault weapons in various state assault weapons laws, and is made up of assault weapons commonly used to commit violence that met the military-characteristic test.”